


in the after

by foolish-quentin (queenradi)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Suicidal Ideation, Talk of Character Death, Talk of Past Relationships, i'm sorry yall but yeah he's sad and mourning, quentin is sad, remembering the mosaic timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 07:43:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18426096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenradi/pseuds/foolish-quentin
Summary: quentin misses them.





	in the after

**Author's Note:**

> i just really want quentin to talk about arielle, his WIFE, more.   
> so here we are.

“I miss her,” Quentin says one night, when Eliot is half asleep on the couch and Quentin is watching the rise and fall of his chest, the motion of his breathing, the distinct Eliot-ness of the way he exists.

“Who?” Eliot mumbles, eyes closed. He reaches a hand out blindly, stretching for Quentin like he already knows the answer.

Of course he already knows. “Arielle,” Quentin says. He takes Eliot’s hand. It’s warm, soft. One of the first things Eliot did when the monster finally left his body was go back to regular moisturizing. He’s also wearing his rings, all of them, and the feel of the bands and stones is such a comfort.

“You miss her,” Eliot says. His eyes are still closed.

“She was my wife.” All of a sudden, it happens again. Fifty years of life come rushing back, only it’s not focused on Eliot, or Teddy. It’s focused on Arielle. Rather, the lack of Arielle. The unbearably short amount of time Quentin got with her. The cruel amount of time she got with Teddy. The years after her death, the sleepless nights and the drinking and the crying and finding Teddy wandering the woods around the cottage wailing for his mother and realizing he was sleepwalking and having nightmares about her death—

Quentin takes a deep, painful breath and leans across the gap between his chair and Eliot’s couch to lean his head on Eliot’s. “I didn’t think…” he breathes. “I didn’t think it would hurt like this, after so long.”

“She was your wife,” Eliot reminds him, gentle. “It’ll probably always hurt.”

“Do you remember,” Quentin mumbles, “When Teddy was twelve? And he—”

“He ran away.” Eliot brushes a hand through his hair. “He came back.”

“After _two days_.” Quentin remembers the panic. The fear. The way it consumed him from the inside out, how he didn’t sleep until Teddy was back in the cottage and then still didn’t sleep until he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Remembers how the locator spell he and Eliot did fizzed out because Quentin was hyperventilating and shaking and he fucked up the Circumstances and felt like he’d failed Teddy all over again.

"He missed her,” Quentin sighed. “He missed Arielle so much that he _ran away from us_. Where the fuck was he going to go, El?”

“Q, we’ve had this conversation hundreds of times.”

“Not since we left.”

“Still.”

“No,” Quentin snaps. “Not ‘still’. Our son ran away from us because he missed his dead mother. I will never be done talking about that.” He lifts his head and sees that Eliot’s opened his eyes, sees that the same sadness is reflected there.

"I loved her too, Q,” Eliot whispers. “And when she died, it hurt me, too. Watching you hurt, hurt me. Watching _Teddy_ hurt…” He shakes his head. His hand slides down from Quentin’s hair to cradle his jaw. “I miss her,” he admits.

"I loved her so much, Eliot.”

“I know.”

The memories are so bright they hurt. Meeting Arielle, hearing her laugh, kissing her, being kissed by her— asking her to marry him, her asking Eliot if she could marry Quentin, Eliot laughing in their faces and kissing their cheeks— Arielle wearing a crown of peach blossoms and maple leaves, her smile blinding and perfect, Eliot binding their hands with a strip of purple silk and performing the marriage rite, Quentin’s heart pounding when Arielle— when she undid just enough of the silk and grabbed one of Eliot’s hands and drew him into the rite—

Quentin’s stomach flips and he shudders and curls closer to Eliot on the couch. He remembers when Arielle told him she was pregnant; she’d told Eliot first, but Quentin couldn’t be upset about that. He couldn’t. Arielle was pregnant and she put Quentin’s hand on her belly and did a little spell and Quentin could feel the baby’s heartbeat and he broke down crying in seconds.

Teddy was born in the middle of the night and Eliot clipped the cord because Quentin was fussing over Arielle and suddenly Eliot shoved the baby into Quentin’s arms and there was more crying. So many of Quentin’s memories from those fifty years involve crying, so many kinds, and—

Fifty years. Quentin lost _fifty years_ , lost his wife and his son and his husband and only got one of them back. Quentin lost a whole life to another timeline and the loss is a gaping wound in his chest.

“I want to go back,” he says. “I wish I’d—”

“Quentin Coldwater, if you tell me that you wish you’d died on that quest I’m going to obliterate you,” Eliot snarls. “You do _not_ get to wish for that. You do _not_ get to want to die. Or be dead. Or wish you had died. I will not let you do that. Not after—” Eliot sighs. “Please. Don’t.”

Quentin wishes there was something he could say to that.

But there isn’t. He can’t lie to Eliot. He can’t make empty promises to Eliot. He can’t do that.

“Fifty years,” he whimpers, but that’s the last of it, and he lets Eliot pull him onto the couch and—

Quentin will never stop missing them.


End file.
